On Turning Ten

“On Turning Ten” is a beloved poem by American contemporary poet Billy Collins. Originally intended as a satire in the tradition of “midlife crisis” poems, the poem became a deep and melancholy exploration of what it is to leave childhood behind. It originally appeared in Collins’s 1995 poetry collection “The Art of Drowning,” alongside other noted poems such as “Reading in a Hammock,” “Keats’s Handwriting,” and the titular “The Art of Drowning.”

The poem is broken into five irregular stanzas, each characterizing a shift in tone from the humorous to the more atmospheric and introspective. “On Turning Ten” explores themes of nostalgia, the loss of innocence and magic, and the looming challenge of growing up. Though written in the early- to mid-1990s, the poem contains very little that ties it to one distinctive time period or place; this makes it an accessible piece that can resonate with childhoods around the world.

Poet Biography

Billy Collins was born in Manhattan in 1941. He studied Romantic poetry at the University of California, but his long career would be influenced more by Modern poets such as Karl Shapiro and Reed Whittemore, as well as the poets of the Beat Generation.